Toward a triadic understanding of charitable giving: how donors, beneficiaries, fundraisers, and social contexts influence donation decisions

Abstract

This thesis applies social psychological theories about intergroup relations (e.g., Social Identity Theory, Tajfel, 1981; the Intergroup Helping Relations as Status Relations model, Nadler, 2002) to investigate the process and outcomes of charitable giving. Moving beyond the traditional focus on studying donors, this thesis uses a mixed-methods approach (surveys, experiments, thematic analysis, and literature review) to show that charitable giving is triadic, relational, and contextualized. That is, decisions about donations are informed by a triad of actors (donors, beneficiaries, and fundraisers), the relationships between them, and the wider social context. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of previous scholarly work on charitable giving and key psychological theories identified as relevant to my approach. Findings from Chapters 2 and 3 confirm that beneficiaries affect donor choices and that the relationships (e.g., shared identities) between particular donors and particular beneficiaries are especially important. Chapter 2 comprises two surveys of confirmed (N = 675) and self-reported (N = 376) donors, which show that donors are not universally generous. Instead, consistent with the social identity approach (Tajfel, 1981; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987), donors prefer to support charities that align with their social groups in meaningful ways. Chapter 3 goes on to present thematic analyses of responses to the question of why donors support their favorite charity (N = 1,849 from 117 countries). Results show a self/other dichotomy in donor motivation: donors are more likely to reference the self when explaining giving to religious and research charities, but are more likely to reference the other (i.e., beneficiary) when explaining giving to social service, animal, or international charities. In combination, Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate that social contexts affect charitable responses, in part by changing the perceived relations between donors and beneficiaries. Chapter 4 presents one survey (N = 189) and one experiment (N = 290) that show how government policy on foreign aid affects private giving by changing perceptions of national giving norms. Chapter 5 presents two experiments (combined N = 440) that demonstrate how political advocacy can affect charitable giving by changing donor emotions, perceptions of efficacy, and identification with beneficiaries. Chapter 6 highlights the importance of also considering fundraisers when studying charitable giving. Mediation analyses from two samples of peer-to-peer fundraisers (combined N = 1,647) show that when fundraisers identify more with their nominated charity they take more actions to raise money and that, in turn, results in more funds raised. In particular, results show that actions which make the fundraiser more salient (e.g., adding photos, sharing personal motivations) are most effective. Chapter 7 draws together evidence from my program of research and more than 300 articles from the interdisciplinary literature to generate a new mode...

Leading and lagging indicators in fundraising management: A Canadian case study

“…It is important to note that there is unlikely to be a single leading indicator that predicts future fundraising revenues because there are complex, interdependent relationships between the external environment, a cause, a fundraising team and its activities, and how donors respond to causes and fundraisers (Chapman, 2019). Instead, organizations must develop a suite of leading and lagging indicators that fit their context, activities, and goals.…”

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“…Interpretivist data analysis calls for multi-level, multiperspective iterative coding-allowing for the accommodation and critical engagement with multiple stakeholders' narratives Guba and Lincoln (1994); Creswell (2007); Jensen (2019); Watts (2014); Chapman (2019) Adoption of first first-person, then third-person analysis of fundraisers, staff, and donors' interviews, separately and then in conjunction with each other.…”

“…The underlying conceptualization is what Kelly (1998) describes as a “theory of magic buttons” that assumes donor characteristics and motivations to be “cross‐situational and even cross‐organizational” (p. 352). Often, studies are designed as experiments focusing on maximizing either the amount given in a single transaction, or the recruitment of additional, first‐time donors as the primary desired outcome of fundraising (Bhati & Hansen, 2020; Breeze, 2017; Chapman, 2019). Similarly, emerging fields of study that seek to understand the emotional and interactional relationships between donors and nonprofits often focus on the efficacy or construction of specific fundraising (and often marketing) techniques such as storytelling in prompting giving behavior, based on specific donor profiles or motivations (e.g., Mitchell & Clark, 2021; Spear & Roper, 2013; Spear & Roper, 2016).…”

To What Extent Is Trust a Prerequisite for Charitable Giving? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

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“…The triadic approach to understanding giving that was mentioned in the introduction can shed light on these findings. Chapman (2019) argues that it is not enough to understand the dispositions and characteristics of donors-such as their general propensity to trust-but instead one must consider the relationships that exist between donors, beneficiaries, and fundraising organizations and how these influence donor decisions (see also Chapman et al, 2021). This study shows that the unique relationship of trust between a donor and a fundraising organization is a much stronger predictor of giving than the donor's general disposition to trust others.…”